Detailed Design of Uber

The detailed design separates rapidly changing location observations from authoritative assignments, trip records, and payment state. Follow those data types through the components below:

Components

Let’s discuss the components of our Uber system design in detail.

Location manager

Riders and drivers connect to the location manager service. It shows nearby drivers when a rider opens the app and receives driver location updates every ~4 seconds. The service forwards driver locations to the quadtree map service to determine the driver’s current map segment. It also stores each driver’s latest location and, during trips, records the route taken.

Quadtree map service

The quadtree map service updates the driver locations. The main problem is how we efficiently find nearby drivers.